


shouldn't we be the epicenter?

by youngerdrgrey



Series: shouldn't we be the epicenter of black life on this campus? [2]
Category: Dear White People (TV)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 10:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10874694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youngerdrgrey/pseuds/youngerdrgrey
Summary: full title:*lionel voice* okay but shouldn’t /we/ be the epicenter of black life on this campus?or,a further exploration into these black lives on Winchester’s campus, just making my way through the season for further depth and hilarity.





	shouldn't we be the epicenter?

**Author's Note:**

> **full title:** *lionel voice* okay but shouldn’t /we/ be the epicenter of black life on this campus?  
>  **chapter title:** shouldn’t we be (idk) calling out our friends?  
>  /  
>  **about:** (1x01) what happens when _Defamation_ ends and Jo pauses in her screaming with her heart still racing to go and get her boy. Or, the time Jo calls out Reggie for letting his jealousy get the best of him on a sacred night.
> 
> **references include** _Scandal, Orange is the New Black_ and the completely unnecessary fucked up death that I will never forgive them for, _the 100_ and the death that I don’t have an opinion on bc I never watched that show, and casual use of both dicktamized and heedlessly in the same sentence #codeswitching

 

/

Honestly, even the _Defamation_  live tweets coming from AP got interrupted today so people could throw in their two cents about Sam, Reggie, and the white boy coming between them and the movement. And it’s not like Joelle would normally care that much about the gossip. Everyone on campus knows that race relations at Winchester are like the pre-teen child Sam and Reggie adopted just when a group home or juvie were closing in on ‘em. But there’s a difference between the normal talk about Jo’s friends and the talk tonight. Normally it’s just a few direct tweets, but tonight, half her timeline’s subtweets about _just whip it out already #nottalkingDefamation_  or _#loveitwhen bae meets activist!bae for the first time_  or just a simple _*Crazy Eyes voice* swiiirl swirl swiiiirl swirl_. So fine, Jo can’t even scroll through her timeline without having to address this, so she needs to address it in person. Even if all she can do is snap at Reggie about growing the fuck up.

She gets out her chair to stalk over to him at his. “You couldn’t wait, could you?”

Reggie peers up at her, still too deep into his feigned nonchalance to lift his legs back off the arm rest. As if she doesn’t deserve the full extent of his energy, or a head to head showdown. Honestly, his mind’s probably still on whatever ‘girl you better watch’ text he just sent Sam about the end of the episode. He flips his phone onto his stomach without even killing the screen.

“Wait for what?”

To whip his fucking dick out and wave it in Gabe’s face. Seriously, what’s with that impulse in guys? Jo’s not out here in booty shorts and bandeaus to prove she’s got more going on than Sam does. (Not that she does. Not that it’s a competition. She’s not competing with her best friend; she’s merely pointing out that she doesn’t have the same need to constantly battle anyone that her crush is into.)

(( Not that it’s much of a competition anyway. Guys always go for girls like Sam, don’t they? Girls who don’t really have to try to summon all the light in the room and can go on without necessarily having to know what it’s like to be black in ‘post-racial’ America. ))

((( Sam knows what it’s like. She knows what her experience is like, anyway, and Jo’s really not trying to get too deep into the whole color-ism of it all. European beauty standards are bullshit and forced on everyone. Jo’s got a banging body that works for a lot of guys who might not want to fully claim her, but she’s not all too interested in guys who unironically use ‘females’ to describe women and call her Queen before they ever even think to ask her name. )))

(((( Wait, what was the point again? ))))

Reggie cocks his head to the side. Assured and righteous as he normally is. But he’s the one in the wrong right now. The one pouncing instead of giving Gabe two seconds to try being in their lives.

“Come on, Reg. He—“ and Reggie groans and rolls his eyes immediately, so Jo just talks louder “— _he_  was here for all of two minutes before you jumped down his throat to make sure everyone in the room could see how _down_  he was.”

Reggie nearly snorts, singing lightly, “‘He ain’t really down.” But it’s Reggie playing those games you do, not Gabe. Reggie throwing his name in the Goblet of Fire for no fucking purpose but to run into the maze and get spat back out for doing it. “Come on. Not even a chuckle? You love old house music.”

She also loves getting to enjoy her hate-watch without being constantly reminded of their stupid relationship drama. “Be serious. I’m not happy either, but you don’t see me picking fights during _Defamation_.”

He shrugs. “You would if you weren’t so busy snapping at everything Olive does."

“Not everything.” Olive could literally control the whole world if she wanted to, but she keeps on going back to that trash ass president she put in the oval. Plus, the shit they do in there? Five seasons in, there’s probably permanent grooves on the rug that her knees put there. Which, whatever, but it’s been years, and Olive won’t leave someone who’s no good for her. “She needs to wise up, and so do you. Jumping all around the point.”

Reggie sits up so straight his shoulders level out. The steel in his eyes snags the light from the TV while his jaw locks up for a beat. “What’s your point then, Jo?” He asks as if he doesn’t already know.

Everybody on this campus knows how Reggie feels about Sam. Including Sam, on some level; she’s just somehow deluded herself into thinking that Reggie only wants her mind, or her activism, or a partner in the movement. But Reggie’s been into every piece of Sam since she still had a relaxer and shared a room with Coco Conners. He’s been trailing after her since the first time she spoke up in class freshman year, and if Jo has to hear about how Sam was like a blacktivist Hermione Granger one more time, she will Obliviate herself, him, and anyone else who’s had to listen to it. But none of that knowledge changes anything. None of that brings what’s been subtext to the forefront quite like this does.

“Sam brought him here on _Defamation_  night. She’s serious about this.” Serious enough that she didn’t tell either of them. And Jo’s not quite sure if Sam’s ashamed of his whiteness or their unapologetic blackness or maybe just that she got dicktamized into a relationship with the very sort of guy she normally mocks heedlessly, but here they all are. “I mean, we’ve supported her through worse.”

“Like what?”

Like the time she single-handedly tried responding to every single person who justified Poussey’s death in _Orange is the New Black_ , dedicating a whole episode of DWP to debunking its use in the narrative. (It’s still a great episode, complete with gems like, “Dear white people, if you fix your mouth one more time to tell me why Poussey’s death was okay but you’re still crying over Lexa from _The 100_ , I honestly don’t have the time to deal with you.” Top ratings, top notch, though it led to some serious rifts within the LGBTQ community on campus.)

Or the time she dated Troy. She planned yacht trips over rallies and acted like Jo and Reggie were both in the wrong for wondering if everything with them was just some dalliance in danger, like a pre-approved trek through the blackness of Sam’s identity before settling in to a non-confrontational future. But even then, Troy was the heir to respectability at Winchester, the crowned prince of how to be the right kind of negro who everyone can rally behind when something goes south and they wind up dead. He couldn’t so much as choose a cereal without his dad’s approval, so Sam and him were never gonna last. Not at this part of her life anyway.

“Just — Sam’s no Olive, Reg.” She won’t be with Picture Frame Gabe more than a few months, not when his true politics start coming out. He might be ready on paper to be part of this, but nobody understands the work until they’re in it. “She won’t choose some white boy over everything else she cares about.” Sam loves them.

Reggie leans up so his chest meets his knees at the armrest. It puts him at her level for the first time this conversation. He asks her, “You sure about that?"

Sam helped Jo take out her braids the night her Hulu trial ended and all they had were YouTube videos for filler. Sam missed her own midterm for psych last semester to help Reggie study for his midterm in poli sci. (Never mind the fact that Sam’s psych class dropped the lowest midterm score; the girl needed the points with the number of events that she kept scheduling during that class.) Sam’s their girl, for more than the movement and for nothing less than life. And if Jo has to fight against the need to widen her eyes and has to run these memories through her mind to convince herself that all of that still matters, then she’s not going to tell him.

“How can you not be?” she asks. Sam’s not going anywhere, even if Jo has to hold her down herself. Friends don’t let friends fuck the president. (And friends, real friends, tell you if they are, don’t they? Real friends let you in on the stuff they’re ashamed about, or wondering about, because if they don’t talk about it, then it’s not real, and if you’re not the one they go to, then maybe your whole friendship was just one of convenience. Maybe it’s high school all over again and the fact that your friends now are cool black kids instead of cool white ones doesn’t actually make a difference. Maybe you’re nothing more than the Coco of junior year.) “I’ll talk to her. Can you just hold off on vilifying her boy until then?”

Reggie plucks at a thread on the seam of his pants. “‘Her boy.’” He yanks the thread a little too hard, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Just leaves him with his fist clenched in the air over nothing. “He said, ‘it’s not worth it,’ then left.” Back in that fight? Seriously? Reggie glances up at Jo again. “He mean her when he say that?”

Because that’s what actually eats at Reggie, isn’t it? That someone on this planet could see his almighty love Samantha White and think she’s anything less than pure perfection.

“Of course not.” Everyone loves Sam; it’s them that everyone else seems unsure about. Because Reggie’s smart and brilliant, but he’s millitant in a way that can chafe at people who want to just enjoy themselves. And most people don’t know that he’ll talk shit for two seconds about the lives they’re ignoring by binge-watching _The Get Down_  all day but that he’ll give himself over to it just a few minutes later. Or that he hasn’t missed a single night of _Defamation_  since the first time Jo dragged him along after Open Mic let out two seasons ago. “Gabe just meant fighting you wasn’t worth sticking around tonight.” She swats a hand at his knee, batting at him as playfully as she can get. As casually as she can make this right now. “Good thing too. You too damn stubborn to ever stop.”

Reggie grins, but his eyes still have this shade over them. His brow crinkles while his nose scrunches up. He’s probably wondering,  _is it worth it to keep fighting? Think Sam will ever notice? Think Sam will ever fight for me too?_  At this point, it’d take an act of either God or the devil to get a reaction out of Sam, and after this blackface party, it sure seems like the devil’s more likely.

Jo swallows that comment down, scans the room to get away from soft eyes that never seem soft just for her. “Now get up. Walk me back to my room.”

He groans, but he pushes up off the chair. Throws his arm around her and tugs her into his side. Her eyes flutter closed, and she gets a whole three seconds of imagining that this could be about them. This could be them. Soft smiles and warm arms wrapped around each other. “You think she’ll ever leave him?” Then he opens his mouth and says that. His voice still comes out a little too heavy. He clears it while she blinks away the three second fantasy. “I mean, the oval’s got to have dents from her knees in the carpet at this point.”

“Oh!” She cackles — quick and bright and like the _Defamation_  flashes are going off inside of her. Olive. Does she think Olive will ever leave the president? Not Sam. They’re finally done talking about Sam. And, okay, seriously, “That’s exactly what I said. Like power to her, get some, but does it have to be with Mr. President?”

“No eyebrows having,” Reggie starts.

“Disrespectful ass,” she continues.

“‘I know what you taste like’ Gerald Grant III.” They shudder together, and if she nestles in closer to his chest on the rest of the walk, they don’t talk about it. Maybe that’s how their little trio works — talk about everything but the big three: how Jo feels about Reggie, how Reggie feels about Sam, and how Sam might not be theirs forever.

Or maybe that’s just post- _Defamation_  overdramatic thinking.

 

Yeah. (Maybe.) 

 

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> More to come!
> 
> If you have any feedback or any missing moments you'd like to see, let me know!


End file.
